By now you have probably heard that CRA has issued their fundraising guidelines. The good news is they are quite changed as a result of the consultation process both in tone and detail. We made a difference. The bad news is that many underlying issues with regard to CRA's approach to charities raising funds to pursue their charitable mission have not been addressed (disbursement quota, definition of what's charitable etc. ) but let us leave those policy issues for later. This is a practical advisory on the guidelines. Note the following:
• You can't avoid it - you must read the new guidelines (CPS-028) for yourselves. Each charity needs to develop a method of documenting its fundraising activity and expenses so they can explain them to the CRA auditors should they come.
• CRA is going to allow estimates of time and costs to be apportioned between fundraising and other agency business. This is a great change because it means you do not have to keep detailed time sheets. Just have a reasonable rational for the cost allocations.
• The grid of acceptable fundraising expenses has been softened. Drache LLB explains the grid and its lack of relationship to the disbursement quota in this brief report.
• The guidelines require disclosure of fundraising expenses in a way that does not distort or mislead. The T3010 alone is not sufficient . CRA wants your expense information to be readily accessible to the public. E.g. website. The good part of this requirement is you can present you fundraising expenses in a way that makes them more understandable for example by presenting the expenses by the different types of fundraising activity. Communicating accurately with the public, and having the public understand the economics of fundraising will continue to be a challenge for the field.
Two Great Collaborative ideas -
1. Send us your fundraising expense policies and documentation procedures. If your agency has done the work to develop the policies and the recording processes why not share them with others? This could save our sector hours of work. If you send them we will figure out how best to present them and share them.
2. If you have a CRA audit we want to hear from you. ONN would like to track the implementation of the fundraising guidelines and share the learning with the sector.
(Sharing through ONN permits us to put out materials that do not have your identifying information. Whether you are identified is your choice.)
